Financiers failing own version of Hippocratic Oath

``Keeping customers' money safe should be an obvious ethical imperative for any firm. But the law also requires it. Yet brokerages fall short on a depressingly frequent basis. Client cash got locked up with company assets both when futures broker Refco went under in 2005 and Lehman Brothers hit the skids three years later. MF Global, which had some Refco assets, tried to head off its 2011 demise with some client assets. And last year Peregrine Financial collapsed after it turned out boss Russell Wasendorf had been misappropriating such funds for years.''